Tag Archives: Kate Atkinson

My first review of the year was of Kate Atkinson’s debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum which prompted me to make more of an effort to read the back catalogues of my favourite authors. It therefore seems fitting to end the year with a review of Atkinson’s third novel ‘Emotionally Weird’ which was first published in 2000 and tells the story of Euphemia (Effie) Stuart-Murray and her mother Nora who live on a remote Scottish island. Effie is telling Nora about her life as a student in Dundee living with her Star Trek-obsessed boyfriend Bob. However, Effie also has questions about her family history and what she really wants is for Nora to disclose who her real father is. Continue reading →

‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’ is Kate Atkinson’s debut novel first published in 1995 and narrated by Ruby Lennox born in 1952 to a middle-class family who live above a pet shop in York. The plot alternates between chapters recounting significant events in Ruby’s childhood during the 1950s and 1960s and extended “footnotes” about the earlier generations of her family told in non-chronological order. Most significantly, the story of what happened to Ruby’s great-grandmother Alice has implications for the whole family for many years to come. Continue reading →

This year’s Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist was announced today. The twenty novels are:

A God in Ruins by Kate AtkinsonRush Oh! by Shirley BarrettRuby by Cynthia BondThe Secret Chord by Geraldine BrooksThe Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky ChambersA Dictionary of Mutual Understanding by Jackie CopletonWhispers Through a Megaphone by Rachel ElliottThe Green Road by Anne EnrightThe Book of Memory by Petina GappahGorsky by Vesna GoldsworthyThe Anatomist’s Dream by Clio GrayAt Hawthorn Time by Melissa HarrisonPleasantville by Attica LockeThe Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerneyThe Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie Girl at War by Sara NovićThe House at the Edge of the World by Julia RochesterThe Improbability of Love by Hannah RothschildA Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Kate Atkinson’s previous novel Life After Life published in 2013 told the story (or rather stories) of Ursula Todd who lives her life several times over in many variations with very different outcomes. Her latest book ‘A God in Ruins’ is a “companion novel” rather than a sequel which focuses on the life of Ursula’s younger brother Teddy. Spanning his life across the twentieth century and four generations of the Todd family, it draws on Teddy’s youth at Fox Corner, his wartime experiences as a pilot flying a Halifax bomber followed by later post-war years with his family. He marries his childhood sweetheart Nancy but has a strained relationship with their daughter Viola who shows little appreciation for the horrors Teddy witnessed when he served in Bomber Command. Continue reading →

I have just watched the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 live stream broadcast on the Huffington Post website. In the build-up towards the big announcement when Miranda Richardson said that the judges were looking for originality, accessibility and excellence, I thought: “It’s got to be ‘Flight Behaviour’! Or ‘Bring Up the Bodies’! Or ‘Life After Life’! One of those three will definitely win it!”